


untalked of and unseen

by prouvairing



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: 5 Things, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Misuse of Shakespeare, Pining, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 21:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12308043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairing/pseuds/prouvairing
Summary: Four times Oliver and James slept together, and one time they didn’t. Not exactly in that order.





	1. Dellecher, September 1994

**Author's Note:**

  * For [richelieux](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=richelieux).



> No joke, this fic wouldn't exist without Eve [richelieux](http://richelieux.tumblr.com/) who, for starters, convinced me to read this book. So it's her fault, but also, she swapped headcanons and fic ideas with me, and was this fic's #1 cheerleader, even though it took me forever to finally push it out. So thanks darling <3
> 
> I'm excited to be able to say I posed fic #4 for this tag though! Let's hope we break two digits soon.
> 
> Only lightly proofread so mistakes are my own. Also only lightly researched so any Shakespearean blasphemy is also my own!

_Dellecher, September 1994_

 

There is an impromptu duel happening in front of the fireplace in the library. Meredith’s hair is tied up and escaping in auburn tufts at her nape. She’s holding a poker from the fireplace and crossing swords with Alexander (his own, a broom from the closet).

She looks over her shoulder at Richard, who is sprawled in the big armchair like he owns it. Most of the other second years—even the ones outside their fledgling group—have cottoned onto the fact that he _does_.

James can’t even muster up the energy to be as annoyed with Meredith as he’d been last year. He’s only relieved she’s set her sights on some other victim.

Not that Richard is any sort of prey, if the look in his eye is anything to go by.

Alexander and Meredith are playacting no duel in particular. They’re mostly trash-talking, but every once in a while they’ll end up like:

Alexander: “ _Villain, what hast thou done?”_

Meredith: _“Villain, I have done thy mother!”_

Oliver is sprawled opposite James, legs half-on, half-off the couch. His ankle knocks into James’s knee when he startles at a particular sudden move of the brawlers.

The clock struck midnight a half hour, or an hour ago. James can’t tell how long it’s been.

There’s something about being back here in the Castle library, with it’s roaring fireplace, and these six people sprawled on chairs and couches and cushions. Any room in James’s house is bound to have about as many books in it, but each one of them feels like a sanctuary. Empty and haunted all at once.

The Castle library is over-warm and full. Meredith and Alexander are heckling each other in iambic pentameter, Wren is nodding off on a cushion by the fire, and the toes of Oliver’s left foot are digging in-between James’s thigh and the couch.

His parents, at home, speak a complicated language made up of Plath, Keats, Shelley, and passive aggressive jabs. Last summer, it had felt a little like petty betrayal to interject with his new Shakespearean tongue, which is why he’d done it as often as possible.

Still, being with people who speak it too—though they are all of them far from fluent still—is a bit like finally relaxing after holding his muscles tense for three months.

“Prithee cut that shit out,” Filippa says, curled on the smaller armchair. “It’d be such a hassle if one of us died right now.”

“If Meredith died, she’d never let us hear the end of it,” James says. Loud enough that the others hear, low enough that it looks kind of like he’s only talking to Oliver. Who is biting back a smile and knocking his right foot into James’s knee again.

Alexander sniggers, and earns himself a whack in the thigh for his trouble. Meredith looks over her shoulder again, though her eyes turn to James this time.

He looks away, to avoid her glare. It is just as well that they rest on Oliver, instead, who’s looking at James and wrinkling his nose. A little mischievous.

It makes James smile, like they’re in on a conspiracy together.

“I think we lost Wren,” Alexander says, lowering his broom-sword.

Wren is snoring softly into the cushion, little snuffling sounds. Filippia rises to grab a blanket from the couch. She stops to tug at Oliver’s hair, and then goes over to tuck the blanket around Wren.

“Maybe we should call it a night,” Oliver says.

 _I don’t want to go_ , James finds himself thinking. He is suddenly sure they will never have a night quite like this again. It’s stupid. They’ve got three more years ahead of them.

Or at the very least one, even if they end up getting cut.

“Oh, come on,” Alexander says. “It’s not that late.”

Filippa: “It’s past two in the morning.”

Alexander: “Exactly. Not that late.”

Filippa: “Your sleep schedule is fucked.”

Meredith looks over Wren’s sleeping, snuffling form, and says, “We could have a sleepover.”

The idea is too good to pass up, even if something in James, a knee-jerk reaction, tells him to object. He compromises.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he says. “But how are we gonna fit?”

Saying something like that to a group of overachieving college students is like throwing down a gauntlet. Filippa and Meredith scramble off to find pillows and blankets, and Alexander starts debating on the pros and cons of sleeping on the floor.

Richard doesn’t rise from his armchair, because he owns it.

The girls come back with the spoils: a blanket each, and pillows guaranteed to those sleeping on the floor. Which ends up being Filippa—who claims the opposite end of the cushion Wren is clutching—and Alexander, stretched out by the couch.

James and Oliver look at each other for a long moment, and Richard looks between them like he expects them to start fighting it out for the couch.

“It’ll be a bit of a tight fit,” Oliver says. “But we can share if you want?”

“You don’t mind?” James says, though he’s already stretching his legs across. Oliver notices, smiles at him, and pinches his calf.

“Sure,” Oliver says.

Alexander: “That thing’s too narrow for both of you.”

Richard: “Nah. Oliver’s skinny enough for it.”

Filippa: “Go the fuck to sleep.”

James pretends not to see how Oliver’s lips purse at Richard’s comment, and turns on his side, face almost pressed against the musty back of the couch.

He doesn’t expect to go hot all over when Oliver crawls up and presses himself against his back. The sensation is so sudden and foreign that James goes still and blinks against the darkness.

“Sorry,” Oliver says. “Do you mind if I—”

Oliver presses even closer, and wraps an arm around James’s waist. It’s perfectly sensible. He’ll fall off otherwise.

“Is this alright?”

“No—yeah. Yeah, sure.”

James takes a deep breath, and stares at the darkness, and tells himself this is Oliver. His nice roommate Oliver. Possibly the best friend he’s ever had, Oliver.

Oliver.

_Damn it._

It’s a long night. The others settle down, after a couple more jabs and giggles, and soon there is nothing but the sound of even breaths, Wren’s snuffles, Richard’s wheezy snores. A few hours in, Meredith finds her way over to the big armchair. Once, Alexander accidentally kicks the couch. Oliver startles and makes a whining noise right in James’s ear.

James isn’t sleeping anyway, but he feels it keenly when Oliver huffs hot breath against his ear and presses his nose just behind it, in sleep.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. For a long while, he thinks he’ll just lie there and deal with his traitorous body reacting to his best friend.

James only realizes he’s fallen asleep when he wakes up. His face is somehow pressed between Oliver’s shoulder blades, and he’s smelling warm cotton and Oliver’s fabric softener. He doesn’t know how in the world they managed to switch positions without either of them falling off the couch.

Oliver is breathing softly, and James’s hand has somehow found its way around him and is pressed against his belly, feeling it move with his breath.

It is only when he looks up, and squints in the morning light, that he sees Richard.

He’s standing by the couch, looming over them with a cup of coffee in hand. He raises one eyebrow and opens up in a brilliant, shit-eating grin.

“You know,” he says. “You two could have slept on opposite ends of the couch. But suit yourself.”

He turns away when James seems to have no response. There’s nothing to say. He hadn’t even thought about it. Had Oliver thought about it?

“I made coffee if you want any,” Richard says, walking away.

 

 

 


	2. False Klamath Cove, Del Norte County, 1995

_False Klamath Cove, Del Norte County, 1995_

 

It’s not been easy, okay, being in love with Oliver. One can only be in denial for so long, ignore one’s own traitorous body for so long, before admitting to oneself that the compounding feelings and palpitations and itching skin and ugly petty jealousy all add up to one inevitable conclusion:

_James Farrow, you unlucky bastard, you have feelings for your best friend._

Not nice heterosexual feelings either, not that there’s ever been anything nice or heterosexual about him. Not once you scratch the surface deeply enough.

James knows there’s ugly things underneath, like a lot of fear, and the aforementioned petty jealousy.

That had started sometime in April of last year, their second year, when Oliver had gotten a girlfriend for a while. James had been a supportive friend, in his way, or had tried. He hadn’t been able to deny the distinct relief he’d felt when she and Oliver had broken up.

And then Oliver had shrugged in something like resignation, like it didn’t matter that much, after all, but didn’t it suck?

And he’d said, “I suppose she thought I was interesting while on stage.” He’d even smiled, at this. “But it turns out, I’m just ordinary.”

And that had just sucked the relief right out of it, hadn’t it?

At first, Oliver hadn’t opened up about the exactly reason why he and Rachel had broken up. It had taken a good two months before James had gotten it out of him. As they were packing up their room for the summer, Oliver had shrugged and delivered the truth in a matter-of-fact, studiedly casual way.

James’s hard-won peace melted away, and the dirty pettiness he’d felt all of April had come back like an angry monster. He couldn’t name it exactly—maybe it was that Rachel had been _there_. That Oliver had let her kiss him, touch him, and she’d found him–what? _Ordinary?_

Instead of doing any number of stupid, regrettable things, James had said, “You should come to California with me.”

And now they’re driving up the coast of Del Norte County, on a road trip with no particular destination. It’s Oliver’s turn behind the wheel of the BMW, and James is meant to be taking a nap in the passenger seat.

He’s looking at Oliver’s profile lit up by the highway lights. The outline of his profile shining neon yellow and white, and the foggy shadow of the coast behind it.

_Ordinary._

“She’s an idiot, by the way,” he finds himself saying, in the hush of the highway.

“Who?”

“Rachel,” James says. He already regrets taking up the conversation, but he’s got to stick to it now. “It’s her loss. You’re better off, anyway.”

It’s awfully close to being selfish, this attempt to console Oliver.

Oliver sighs, and his hands tighten minutely around the wheel.

“I don’t know that she was wrong,” he says. His voice is too small. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Really, James. It’s not like I was in _love_ with her.”

It’s the first thing that Oliver’s said about this relationship that sounds like the truth. Thank God.

“She’s wrong,” James reiterates. Forcefully. If only he could drill the notion into Oliver’s brain—that he is anything but ordinary. That he’s important. Fundamental, even.

Finally, to change the subject, “We should stop. Go to the beach.”

Oliver’s eyebrows rise, and his lips purse. He looks considering, pensive.

“You know what?” Oliver says. “Yes, we should.”

Which is how they find themselves on a foggy beach in False Klamath Cove, sitting down on the shore with their socks full of sand.

Well, Oliver’s, anyway.

“I told you to take your shoes off.”

“Fine, yes,” Oliver says. He’s struggling with the cork of the wine bottle. “You’re always right, James.”

“Of course I am,” James says, and takes the bottle from him. 

They pass the bottle back and forth and James forcibly doesn’t think about fitting his lips where Oliver’s have been. He’s not quite _that_ pathetic yet.

They pass the bottle, and talk, and Oliver laughs, and they quote Pericles, and it’s _easy._ Even when they’re talking about James’s parents. And how they got in the BMW literally to speed _away_ from James’s parents. Because James hadn’t considered, flushed and full of the thought of a summer with Oliver, that it’d mean that Oliver would have to meet _his parents._

“They’re not that bad,” Oliver says. “I mean, to me. But they’re not _my_ parents so they get an automatic pass.”

He laughs, like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever said. It makes James both happy and sad. And he’s a little miffed, too.

“Mom keeps calling you _Toby_ ,” he points out.

“Well, hey,” Oliver replies, snatching the bottle away from James. “You can’t blame her too much. She’s only getting her Disney animals mixed up.”

James can’t let it go, of course, and suddenly he’s annoyed. That Oliver would just let people talk to him like that, overlook him like that. James’s mom. Rachel. Gwendolyn.

“Hey,” Oliver says, catching his mood. Always. He elbows James softly. “Hey, James, it’s alright. I promise.”

James ducks his head. “I know.”

He doesn’t say, _That’s the problem._ He’s a petty mess, but Oliver doesn’t deserve this. That’s rich of him, anyhow, taking out on Oliver how other people treat him.

There’s a lull, then, a stretch of silence. Despite the tension underlining it, it’s not uncomfortable. The night is chilly, but Oliver is sitting close on the beach towel, and his shoulder brushes James’s. Their knees touch, every once in a while.

Oliver upends the wine bottle over the sand, and his mouth bends in a sad moue of disappointment.

“No more wine,” he says. There’s a whine in his voice, which is how it’s apparent he’s drunk.

James is pretty drunk too, and there’s a second empty bottle lying in the sand behind them.

 _Who the hell is gonna drive us back?,_ he thinks, distantly. And then, wildly, watching the moon in Oliver’s hair, _she’s already sick and pale with grief that thou art far more fair than she…_

“You know what we should do?” Oliver says, suddenly, over the sound of the waves.

Oliver says, “We should go swimming.”

 “We left our swimming trunks in the car.”

Oliver, pouting unfairly: “Oh.”

James stares at him for a long moment, and thinks, _I’m not about to say what I’m about to say._

He stands. Oliver looks up at him and blinks owlishly.

“Well,” James says. “I’m fine skinny dipping if you are.”

The smile that spreads on Oliver’s lips is very dangerous, but the tipsy laugh that follows is anything but.

Oliver jumps up by his side, and starts undoing his pants with no more prompting. This should clue James in that it’s a bad idea, but instead it only ignites his blood.

They’re naked in no time. In no time at all he’s naked on a beach, at night, with Oliver.

Any number of terrible things could happen right now.

Oliver takes off towards the shore and starts shouting over his shoulder when he’s halfway to the waterline.

“James!” he shouts. “Let’s go!”

If he had any designs _not_ to follow him, they’d be futile. He runs after the long, smooth line of Oliver’s back, his feet kicking up sand and then sea foam. The waves break around his hips, and Oliver yelps.

James doesn’t know who came up with the idea that the ocean at night is warm. It’s not. It freezes his balls right back into his body.

“Oh my _God_ , Oliver!” he shouts. Oliver turns towards him, water up to his chest, shaking and laughing. His teeth chatter.

“I know!” he shouts back, drunk, unstoppable. “It’s awful!”

James laughs, and launches himself at Oliver, hanging onto his shoulder and ducking him under the waves.

Oliver screams. When he reemerges, he sputters, “ _Villain!_ ” and throws himself back at James to exact his revenge.

They don’t stay in the water very long. It’s too cold. But God, James doesn’t think he’ll ever forget those few freezing, exhilarating minutes he tussles with Oliver and the waves. The ugliness inside of him, the petty jealousy and sweet torment he’s been battling all year fall away. It’s like they’ve reverted back to some more fundamental part of themselves. Some joyous, simpler version of Oliver-and-James, a version that’s happy forever.

They’re shaking when they make their way back to their towels. They wrap up tight and sit down on the sand again, and eventually lie down.

“We need to unwrap ourselves if we wanna air-dry,” Oliver whispers. His voice is still a little languid with wine, but if he’s feeling anything like James, he’s starting to come down.

“Just a minute,” James whispers back. There’s no need to whisper. Why are they whispering? “Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let me fall asleep.”

“Okay,” Oliver says. Like he believes he can, with the way his eyelids are drooping, lashes making shadows swoop on his cheeks.

“Okay,” James says, a moment before sleep.

 

 

 


	3. Ohio, Thanksgiving 1997

_Ohio, Thanksgiving 1997_

Last night, sleeping next to Oliver, a bare two inches of insurmountable space between them, had felt like the first night James had slept in—longer than he can remember. Longer than is healthy, probably.

It’s not that he hasn’t slept at _all_ of course. It’s just his bed has become a hostile place. When he lies down, he can just feel the slight slope in the mattress where the head of the boat hook lifts a corner, from the inside.

Maybe he’s been imagining it. Maybe he’s going crazy, after all.

Lying in his bed he can’t not feel it. Poking his shoulder, kicking up that wave of fear that brings him right back to the pier, that night. His rabbit heart kicking, and kicking, and wanting to live no matter the cost.

He’s been spending a lot of fitful nights on the couch in the library, is the thing. The times Oliver isn’t in his bed, and James doesn’t have to pretend he can stand being in his own. Which are also the nights he cannot stand the sight of Oliver’s empty bed, and what that means.

Oliver was right next to James, last night. The sound of his breath had lulled James with its familiarity. Four years sleeping to the sound of the same person’s breath.

 _We are not such strange bedfellows_ , he’d said. James remembers. There is nothing less strange than Oliver’s presence in the bed beside him.

It hadn’t quite been the first time he’d slept in months—just the first time getting to sleep hadn’t been a battle. 

They went to a coffee shop today, escaping the Marks family breakfast as soon as humanly possible. James had even had a little fun, seeing Oliver squirm at every word out of his family’s mouth.

It had been fascinating in the way everything about Oliver is fascinating—seeing where he is from, what made him. Oliver’s attempts to distance himself from his family just as telling as anything else.

He’d liked Oliver’s sisters. Leah, whom Oliver clearly loved, and even Caroline, who was quiet and restless. Their teasing this morning had stirred up the old, petty, possessive thing inside James.

And then they’d been off in Oliver’s car, and it had been so like their summer in California that James had almost managed to forget what he’d done.

“Do you know what?” Oliver had said, driving through the wide suburban streets. “I apologize. I get how excruciating it must have been for you that summer, me meeting your parents. It’s horrible.”

James had sipped his coffee peacefully, hiding a smile. “What goes around, Oliver…”

“Shut up,” Oliver had said, throwing a glance at him. Smiling.

Almost making him forget.

Night falls, however, and somehow, despite last night, the fall of night is still hostile. He’s become too used to dreading it. He knows enough about his mother’s neuroses to know that this is a consequence of insomnia—anxiety rising as the time to sleep approaches. Making it harder to sleep in turn. A vicious cycle.

It is almost normal, to change for bed with Oliver, in the same room. Is it really so crazy that he might think… 

That it’d be so easy to be something other than friends, that the step between this and that isn’t really so big?

He slides into bed with Oliver. Oliver, who holds one corner of the sheet open for him, absent minded, a book in his hand.

“What’s that?” James asks, head on the pillow and looking up at Oliver’s face. Oliver’s sitting up against the headboard and he looks down at James, away from his book.

“A poetry anthology,” he says, and turns the book so James will see the spine.

“Why, Oliver,” James says, smiling. “What will William say? He’ll know you’re going around reading other poets, you know?”

Oliver laughs. A little too loud, because he slaps a hand on his mouth right after, and looks at the wall between his room and his sisters’.

“He never has to know,” Oliver says. “Not unless you snitch.”

Oliver goes back to his book, and James lies there looking at him for a moment. It’d be so easy, wouldn’t it? To tell Oliver? To tell Oliver all of the truth. From his stupid feelings to what he—to what he did.

Oliver would make it all right, wouldn’t he?

But Oliver looks down at him for a moment, and his eyes are warm.

He says, “You know? I’m glad you came over.”

James mouth is suddenly dry. Yeah, it’d be so easy. To tell Oliver. But the thought of losing that—the way Oliver looks at him. It’s suddenly terrifying.

“Me too,” he says, at length.

He lies there for a long time, even after Oliver turns out the light and lies down with him. Feeling the two inches of space that seem insurmountable, at least until Oliver’s breath deepens. Then Oliver turns towards him, a sweet, unconscious movement. His arm and leg bump against James’s as he draws closer. So close his breath washes warm against James’s neck.

James closes his eyes. To spill his guts and maybe lose all this? Even if it’s never quite as close as he wants, isn’t it better than losing Oliver altogether? Losing the chance to sleep at all?

It should be an easier question to answer.

Except James has never been neither brave nor selfless.

 

 


	4. Dellecher, Spring 1998

_Dellecher,_   _Spring 1998_

 

He can’t stop thinking about the look on Oliver’s face. Three times tonight Oliver looked at him in ways James can’t forget. _Tell me you didn’t do it,_ and Oliver’s eyes hard as stone, like James wasn’t James, wasn’t even human. And then the way they’d been soft again, Oliver’s mouth parted in the moment right after James had kissed him.

The thought comes with the finality of a death knell: _you will never kiss him again_.

And the third time, worst of all, Oliver looking back at him as the police took him away. With that odd, solemn face, like that morning by the lake when he’d looked at James and said, _Let be._

The Tower is empty. Their room is empty. Oliver’s bed is empty.

James can’t stop thinking about the look on Oliver’s face. The way he’d said, _It’s okay._ The way he’d looked down at James and said, _Worthy prince, I know’t._

James sits there, on Oliver’s sheets, one hand on Oliver’s cold pillow. Richard looks over his shoulder, his laugher in James’s ear still, always.

This is it. This is his to bear now.

 

 


	5. Dye Water, Scotland, 2008

_Dye Water, Scotland, 2008_

Afterwards, there’s pale moon thrown over hideously patterned carpet, white lace curtains blown gently by the breeze, and crickets chirping outside.

Miss Agnes’s guest room is not the best place to have sex with the love of your life after years of longing, and suffering, and being dead in a few different ways.

The bed of Miss Agnes’s guest room professes to be a double, but it’s more a single-and-a-half. Which is fine if it gives you a chance to be closer to the aforementioned love of your life. Who has gotten a little broader, a little more solid, in your absence.

It also _creaks_ , which is not so fine.

But James doesn’t have it in him to be mad at Miss Agnes for anything, not when she took him in at the lowest point of his life.

Oliver lies beside him on the small bed, on his back, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. James is on his side, turned towards him, looking at the profile of Oliver’s nose outlined by the moonlight. He has an arm thrown over Oliver’s chest, trapped in one of Oliver’s hands. Fingers trailing up and down the soft inside of James’s forearm, maddening.

“Did you tell anybody?” James says. It’s the first thing he’s said in a while.

They’re still lying here, even though they’re gonna get tacky soon. There should baby wipes in the dresser, which James only knows because that’s also where Agnes keeps her spare plug adapters.

“That you’re here?” Oliver asks.

James makes a sound of assent, and Oliver’s head lolls to the side, eyes on him again. They’re very wide and look inky dark in this light. When his eyes meets James’s he smiles a little, like he can’t quite help it.

“I didn’t,” Oliver says. “I just said I wanted to travel. See the world a little.”

A beat of silence. Then James can feel laughter bubble up in his throat, a touch hysterical.

“Shut up,” Oliver says. There’s a smile in his voice. “They all thought it was very healthy. _It’s good you’re taking some time for yourself, Oliver._ ”

The voice he makes is ever so slightly higher in pitch.  Feminine without being cartoonish. A little posh. James wonders if he’s trying to mimic Meredith.

If James had ever doubted he was petty, he’d have confirmation by the old jealousy that flares up in his belly again.

_Good God, Farrow, still?_

He combats the feeling by catching Oliver’s fingers and tilting his head to reach Oliver’s jaw. He presses a kiss on the underside of it, where the skin is soft and vulnerable, and he can feel Oliver’s pulse jump under his lips.

Mouth against Oliver’s ear, James says, “ _And Romeo leap into these arms, untalked of and unseen._ ”

He feels Oliver shiver minutely. He turns his head so James’s mouth catches the corner of his lip.

“ _We have_ not _bought the mansion of a love_ ,” Oliver laughs, and trips a little over the words, “ _But thoroughly possessed it._ ”

His smile is a little wicked. Even before, when they were tangled together in the steadily creaking bed, he hadn’t smiled quite like this. His hands had been shaking where they touched James, holding him a little too tightly. Ready to catch him fleeing.

James had clutched back like he’d always meant to be caught.

This reunion feels a little like too much tension breaking, leaving them giddy and over-hyper. Like laughing at a really morbid joke, except the joke is their lives.

James laughs again, now, at Oliver’s terrible joke. He watches Oliver’s smile spread and get closer.

“I don’t know about that,” James says. He’s not practiced in flirting anymore, but he lets his eyes go half-lidded, his voice a little lower. “I don’t feel _unsold_.” He smiles. “And yet, yes, enjoyed.”

Oliver laughs again. He says, “Oh, yeah?”

They haven’t been quite this carefree in over ten years. James thinks they won’t ever know how to be completely carefree again, but this moment comes easy. A small miracle.

Oliver rolls over, holds himself on top. His belly presses into James’s, and his hips.

James isn’t quite sure what his face is doing, but it’s probably something foolish.

His mouth is even more foolish. It says, a bit nonsensical, “ _Come, gentle night_ ,” and even as Oliver is bending down to kiss him, “ _Come, loving, black-browed night –_ ”

The rest of it is silenced by Oliver – lying on the wings of night, as it were. It’s fitting – exchanging Shakespeare for Oliver’s mouth, which is about the only thing James would give it up for, anyway. Oliver’s lips and tongue. Oliver’s teeth biting his bottom lip, and his fingers in his hair.

After almost twelve years, overall, of imagining this – now Oliver in his arms, against his body.

There are no more words. Borrowed or new.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering who the heck Miss Agnes is, she was invented during a long conversation with Eve back in August that started with "how did James disappear" and continued through "where did he go, and how did he survive with virtually no identity" and ended up in "he's lodging with a small old lesbian lady in the Highlands." That's a fic for another day.
> 
> As always I'm [seagreeneyes](seagreeneyes.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, please please please do come talk to me about Oliver/James and general IWWV headcanons.


End file.
